How to take the fanatic out of the fan pt. 1

I admit it. My well of new blogging ideas has run dry. So I've decided to do something a little different. I've been a journalism student for the past few years and I thought it might be fun to share a few of the stories I've written for classes, newspapers, etc. The first I am publishing is a column written for a magazine writing class. The assigned topic was a how-to article. Being a major sports fan, naturally, I catered my column to sports, hence the title, "how to take the fanatic out of the fan." The column as a whole is a bit long so I decided to break it up into four parts. I'll release a new part every week or so. This particular piece isn't great writing, but it sure was fun to create. I hope my one follower enjoys it as much as I did.

How to take the fanatic out of the fan
Matt Andreason

There’s a reason the word fanatic was shortened to fan. It’s my belief the move was symbolic, with fanatic representing the extreme, and fan representing the condensed version of our rooting behavior. If you’ve been to a sporting event recently, you’ll see my perspective is not always the majority. As a self-proclaimed "professional sports observer" I’ve broken down fanatics into four distinct groups. These four groups can disturb, annoy, drink, and do a number of other things to poorly represent a fan base. The only question is how do we eliminate the fanatics and welcome them back as simple fans? Let's find out how one might do it.

Group 1

Jersey fanatics: In sixth grade my friends and I had what we called Jersey Monday. Every Monday we’d come to school adorning our favorite jersey that usually represented our favorite player. Back then, pretending to be Reggie Miller and hitting a corner three on the playground was always the highlight of my week. Soon, seventh grade was upon us. It took me about thirty seconds that first morning of middle school to realize putting on a jersey would be my first attempt at societal suicide. Apparently, thousands of 40-year old men and women didn’t get the same memo. Too often when a sporting event is held, we’re surrounded by fully-grown men whose days of pretending to be someone else have embarrassingly been prolonged. Worse yet, many of these adults can be spotted next to aspiring children who are wearing a pair of nice jeans and a faded T-shirt. Shouldn’t those roles be reversed?

Solution for fanatic cleansing: I’m all for a free-market economy, but the best way to combat this group of fanatics is to set some limits on the sports’ store consumer. There must be a strict age limit for buying jerseys, and it shouldn’t surpass the age of 15. Identification checks should be administered for every purchase as well. It might start a whole new revolution of fake Ids, but for the sake of a mature adult society, it’d be more than worth it.